


The Life and Times of Bucky Barnes

by babygrxxt



Series: The Life of Leavenworthers [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bad life decisions, F/M, M/M, Russia, TW:Miscarriage, Unreliable Narrator, leavenworth, short fic, small town AU, tw:alcoholism, tw:depression, tw:infidelity, tw:violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2018-09-16 01:21:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9267425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babygrxxt/pseuds/babygrxxt
Summary: If Bucky could count on one hand the amount of people he had lost in the past five years, he would have been the happiest man on earth. Instead, he was perhaps one of the saddest, and it was all Steve Rogers’ fault (and, perhaps, a little bit of his own, and a little bit of fate’s, but he chose to ignore that on the days he was particularly angry with Steve Rogers).Because his life had been going perfectly well before his best friend’s mom died and he skipped town to go join the army. Bucky had friends, girls hitting up his phone every few hours, a place in Harvard, a future planned. But when Steve left, all that went to shit, and he ended up bunking in a tiny box-room in Russia, sleeping with Natasha Romanoff, becoming best friends with Brock Rumlow and was orphaned before he was even twenty-five.Bucky Barnes fucking hated Steve Rogers, but he kinda (completely) loved him too. This is his side of the story.





	1. Chapter 1

If Bucky didn't know the exact number of freckles  he would find under Steve's black suit, he would be a happy man.

It was a Sunday; it wasn't raining, but moisture hung in the air and occasionally turned into horizontal lines when one chose to recognise them. It was what Bucky and Steve would've called a hill day, back when they were kids. Of course, they still were kids, just eighteen the both of them, but when they were proper kids, when they were younger and Steve had laughter lines and Sarah was alive.

Sarah.

Bucky had cried over her more times over the past few days than he'd cried over anything in his life, or at least he wished he had. The reality was that the second Steve opened the door to his house and Bucky saw Sarah lying dead in her favourite armchair, the emotions that had always been prevalent on Bucky's face suddenly disappeared. He couldn't find it within himself to cry, or scream, or feel anything. When Natasha had teased him that morning for forgetting to shave a spot on his cheek, he hadn't even been able to muster a smirk.

Crying, though - it came closer with each passing moment. Father Coulson read out the Catholic Prayer for Death. It was solemn and uninspiring, like many religious vows or promises were to Bucky, and soon his words managed to blur into the surrounding landscape of the Leavenworthian cornfields. Around him, his friends stood, their hair standing on end from the humidity, their clothes black. Beside him stood Steve.

Of course, beside him was always Steve. Steve was always beside him. Words became hard to form into sentences, because Sarah was dead, and Sarah had always made sense of things for Bucky.

He wished he'd told her. He wished he'd spoken to her before this all happened, before she disappeared to be with the Lord or whatever cock and bull story she believed in (Bucky hoped, though, that it wasn't cock and bull, that it was truth, that Sarah was up there somewhere having tea with Jesus and getting her hair plaited with flowers, but he couldn't believe it, not even when he tried. Neither could Steve; Bucky could tell by his face).

It was hard to focus. His vision was like how Betty described wearing only one contact. The world didn't seem solid, somehow.  The only thing he could focus on was his own hand, placed squarely on Steve's shoulder. They stood hip-to-hip. Bucky could feel his crying. It reverberated through his back.

 _Don't cry, Barnes,_ he told himself. _Steve needs someone strong. Steve is always so strong, and here he is breaking._

Two days before she died, Steve had been up in his bedroom. Bucky had came over with his baseball bat in a last stitch attempt to convince his friend to participate in the last friendly game of the season, and indeed their last year of school. He hadn't expected to be successful; he hadn't expected that it would be the last time he would speak to Sarah, either.

"James," Sarah said when she opened the door. Bucky came to Steve's house to see the smile on his best friend's face, but Sarah was the next best thing. He grinned at her and buried his face into her shoulder, lifting her a little from the floor. He used to do that to Steve as well, but then the other boy grew five inches, and they were pretty much eye to eye. Bucky wished ...

Bucky wished. That was the long and short of it.

When they broke apart, Bucky could notice how Sarah's blonde hair was whiter than ever before. Skin hung on her face like a rotten apple, and the red on her cheeks was nothing but blush. He was raised a gentleman, and so he didn't mention the fact that she was dying and her son didn't seem to realise. Sarah followed his lead.

"You're attempting to get my boy into sports, then?" she said as she closed the front door behind him. He stepped into the warmth of their house, breathed in the floral scents of Sarah's perfume, revelled in the paints scattered on the coffee table.

With a cocky smile, he ruffled his hair. "Am I that transparent?" He chuckled, and Sarah smiled, her lips tight and stretched with the unfamiliarity. They had a shared interest in Steve Rogers, and they loved each other for it.

Bucky was sure she knew. She had to have known. It was why she looked at him sometimes when she thought he didn't see. It was why, just before Steve clomped down the stairs, she wiped the polite greeting from her face and made Bucky promise that no matter what, he'd protect her boy.

"Even from yourself," she had warned, and Bucky didn't have the chance to ask anything of that, not that he needed to. He understood her words completely.

She knew. She had to have known. It was why she wiped her nose before waving the boys off to the hills.

Focus on things other than Sarah. The chill of the air. The drone of Father Coulson's voice. The sound of Natasha shuffling on her feet. The gesture of Clint reaching his fingers out to touch hers and then letting his hand drop.

Steve's breath, coming heavy and laboured, though not asthmatic, not that he could tell, and he'd gotten pretty proficient at telling. Sarah had been a nurse; she'd taught Bucky things like that. She'd been prepping him to take over for her. She'd known. She'd known he'd never leave Steve.

Bucky sniffed. Blond hairs stood to attention on the back of Steve's neck. His hand was mere millimetres away from them, and he almost grasped onto the back of his best friend's head and brought it to his lips, but stopped himself just short. He took his hand off Steve's shoulder and pretended not to notice the soft inhalation of disappointment. He raked his fingers through his greased hair and tried desperately hard not to cry.

She'd known. She'd known he was in love with his best friend. He'd been in love with Steve since ... Since he could remember. He'd wanted to kiss him since he knew what kissing was. He'd wanted ... He'd wished and he'd wanted for as long as he'd known him.

He knew how many freckles were under his shirt. He knew how many times Steve had bitten his fingernails that morning alone. He knew what his paintings consisted of, how they'd gone from reds to greens to blues over the years, how his own face was a feature, but never in the way he wanted. He knew what Steve dreamed about, because the other boy used to lie beside him in a field and tell him in mind-blowing and quite unbelievable detail.

Bucky wanted to kiss him. He wanted to cry and kiss him, all at once. His own breaths were coming out uneven and Nick Fury was behind him sniffling. He'd never seen Nick Fury show any kind of emotion when it wasn't directed at Natasha, and it was terrifying. It was terrifying because Bucky didn't know what to do with himself or his body.

Since he'd figured out whatever it was to figure out, he hadn't known what to do with his hands. Hands were such a precious thing; Steve's were perfectly formed, skinny fingers with larger knuckles, soft skin with no calluses like Bucky's.  Steve's hands were artist's hands, and Bucky had seen him do so many things with them, like writing maths equations and flipping someone off and swimming and cupping Betty Ross' face as he kissed her.

Fuck.

Think of anything but Sarah. Think of anything but Steve. Think of anything but the most important people in the world to him. Think, think, think.

Natasha. Her form was lovely in her dress. It was too tight, but it suited her. She knew boys liked her when she wore tight things. Her face was bright, even with the grief. Her eyes were knowing, and they flitted from person to person, cataloguing their reaction and comparing them to her own correct assumptions.

She caught Bucky's gaze. He dropped it almost immediately, but she continued to look after him, finally taking Clint's hand as she did so.

Too much was known about him by Natasha Romanoff. He had called her up one morning, mere hours after he'd left Steve's house, mere hours after he'd almost lost his best friend. She'd allowed him to come over and sit on her bed and cry his heart out.

They'd pretended it didn't happen afterwards, and he couldn't thank her enough for that.

"What's this about?" she had asked. His head was in her lap and she was stroking his hair, just like his mother did, just like Steve did as Bucky fell asleep in the car on the way to someplace amazing.

"I almost lost him, Nat," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I almost lost him, what the hell else would it be about?"

Natasha had not said anything, and eventually, ever so quietly, Bucky had said the words he dreaded even to think to himself.

"I love Steve."

She dried his eyes, and she pulled him to the school gym, which was open to the public most of the time on account of Leavenworth not having nearly enough to spend on two gyms in one town.

"Go on," she had said. "Tell me about it."

He'd blinked at her like a deer in headlights. Then, without another moment of hesitation, he took a swing at the bag. He kept punching and kicking and yelling as he went.

"I love Steve!" he declared, thumping the bag right in the middle and wheezing when it rebounded back on him. "I fucking love Steve. I - I want to fuck Steve. Fuck. I want to fuck my best friend. Fuck fuck fuck."

The bag broke off the chain. Whether that was due to the force he was delivering, or because it was weak to begin with, they couldn't decide. Natasha nodded, didn't say anything, and they walked back to her house with weight on their feet.

Bucky wanted nothing more on the day of Sarah's funeral than to go over to her and say that this day, he wanted to fuck Steve more than ever. How did that make sense? How did any of this make sense, that Steve looked more beautiful that morning than he ever had before, even in his pain?

Then Bucky realised what he really wanted. He wanted to help Steve; he wanted Steve to love him back, and he wanted to put a smile on his face instead of that dreaded grief. He wanted to fuck him - no, he wanted to make love to him.

Fuck. His grip on Steve's shoulder tightened a little, and the other boy never noticed. He never noticed anything, that was Bucky's problem. Or else he noticed everything and chose not to say a word. Bucky wasn't sure which was worse.

Maybe Steve felt Bucky's eyes on him. After hours of constant staring, it must've begun to burn. Steve turned to him, those bright blue eyes, the eyes he knew better than his own, and there were tears in them and they were more red than blue. Bucky blinked the tears out of his own eyes and looked at Steve, looked at him and said all the things he wanted to say without speaking a word.

Steve didn't understand. He would never understand how much Bucky bled for him,  how much he drunk to try and forget him, how much he died every second Steve wasn't there. How Bucky couldn't live without him, even if he tried.

Steve wouldn't understand. He wouldn't have to: he would never know.  Bucky would make sure of that.

He had to protect Steve, even from himself, no matter how much it hurt.

"Hey," he said, because he couldn't think of anything else. "She's good now, yeah?"

Right thing to say. Bucky couldn't put into words how relieved he was, how much he wished he could take this all away. Steve patted Bucky's lower back, and didn't seem to notice how the action drew shivers up Bucky's spine.

"She's with Pa," he said. "She's good."

Bucky could sympathise. God, if Steve died, he'd want to die a thousand times to be with him. (He'd need to do a couple penances first though, because God knows he'd done a million things wrong, whereas Steve would go straight to Heaven for his heart alone.)

They both turned back to watch as the coffin was lowered into the ground, and Bucky's hand acted of its own volition. It travelled from between the blades of Steve's shoulders down to the middle of his back, and when he got no response, ill or otherwise, his fingers rested there with satisfaction, rubbing little circles into his best friend's skin.

"Thank you, Buck," Steve said as the congregation shuffled out of the cemetery.

"Ah, it's nothing, pal," Bucky replied, waving it off. "What're friends for, right?"

Not the right thing to say. Steve furrowed his eyebrows a little, the way he used to every time Rumlow spoke, and Bucky swallowed three times in succession.

He was beautiful. Bucky was an idiot. A stupid fucking idiot who kept trying to make conversation with the boy whose mother had just died.

"At least it wasn't raining."

"Huh? I thought it was."

"Not really. Just drizzles."

"Ah. Nat'll be mad at me."

"Why?"

"Her hair."

"Oh. Yeah. Nah, she'll be alright today."

"Today?"

"Well, y-"

Steve had forgot. Somehow, even as they walked in a procession down the Main Street, he had forgotten that his mother was dead.

Bucky was the worst fucking person in the world. He deserved to be in so much pain. He deserved to feel a knife through his heart every time Steve came to him for dating advice, or to tell him about his day, or even to complain about the teachers. He deserved all of it.

He didn't deserve Steve as a best friend, though. He wasn't sure who he'd saved in another life to make that possible.

They got back to Steve's small house - just Steve's now, God - and Bucky's Ma immediately got to work planting lilies in vases on the fireplace, the coffee table, the side table, every surface she could get her hands on. Delilah brought in sandwiches, and Mary started pouring the tea for the guests.

Bucky wasn't very good with funerals. He'd never even been to one before. His Da, though, was very good at funerals. When he'd been in the army, he'd attended one a week. Pretty soon, so his Da said, they all seemed like the same thing. Bucky glanced around the room and found his Da in the corner, puffing on a cigar. His Ma walked past and coughed pointedly, but his Da had that look on his face, so he probably hadn't even seen her.

As the day wore on, people drifted in and out of the small house. Bucky's Ma had been rubbing insistently at the blood-stain on Sarah's armchair from where she'd coughed her last breath, but had been unsuccessful at moving it anywhere. In Bucky's opinion, it had actually spread.

He ran a hand through his hair, screwing up his face at the grease on his hand from the pomade his Da had loaned him, and made his way into the kitchen to find a rag to rub it on.

There was no one in the kitchen but Steve hunched over the cooker, stirring insistently at a pot of stew. Bucky wiped his hands off then rolled up his shirt sleeves, moving over beside Steve. Wordlessly, he leaned over and flicked the cooker switch to 'on.' Steve just blinked.

"Buck."

"Happens to us all," Bucky interrupted. Steve's Adam's apple jolted in his throat. Bucky nearly died on the spot. "Listen, I'll finish this up. You go up to your room for a while, okay?"

Steve glanced at the door that led to the living room. "But the people..."

"I'll deal with them for a while," Bucky said. He put both of his hands on the side of Steve's face. "I'm good with people, remember?"

Steve laughed, a weak pathetic sound, and rubbed his face a little against the roughness of Bucky's hands. "How could I forget?" he asked. "Pretty sure half the school would marry you if you asked them."

"Well, I'm not asking," Bucky replied. He didn't care if anyone wanted to marry him; he just wanted Steve to not have to suffer anymore. "Go on," he said, putting his hands back on the ladle where they belonged. Steve wasn't his; he was just his best friend. "Get some rest. I'll come wake you in an hour or so, kay?"

Needless to say, Bucky didn't wake him up. He stayed up himself until about ten o'clock that night, long after his own family kissed him goodbye and dispersed to their own home and routines.

("Darling, I know he's your best friend, but you need some sleep too."

"I'll get more sleep here."

"You always have.")

Bucky shoved the final casserole of the night into the fridge, managed to eat a couple spoonfuls of it without retching into the sink, and then reluctantly trailed himself upstairs. Sarah's door remained open, her double bed beckoning but smelling too much of her perfume, too empty and large. Steve's was closed, but as Bucky pushed it open, he automatically felt at home.

"Hey, Buck," Steve said. He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. He didn't even turn to his friend as he entered.

Bucky pulled his tie off and dropped it onto the floor, followed swiftly by his shoes.

"How long you been awake?"

"Not long. 'bout five hours."

"Jesus, Steve."

Steve closed his eyes. He didn't like it when Bucky took the Lord's name in vain, not on days like this, not when they needed his favour. Bucky chastised himself under his breath and began to unbutton his shirt, when Steve poked his hand out of the covers.

Bucky's eyes dashed from the white expanse of his fingers to Steve's face. It was clearly an invitation. Who was Bucky to refuse?

Slowly, he crept into Steve's single bed. It had been easier to fit when they were twelve; Steve's knees were digging into Bucky's thighs, and their faces were closer than they'd ever been before. Bucky wasn't complaining, but he hoped grief would stop his body's reaction from being in such proximity to Steve.

"Hey," Bucky said, taking Steve's hand under the covers and holding it between their chests. "She's okay, now, you know. Ma said the big guy makes everything better."

"You don't believe that."

"Maybe not. But you didn't believe I had genital herpes a year ago either. Sometimes things you don't believe in turn out to be the truest things there are."

Steve looked at him for a moment and then burst into laughter. It was different than his usual; heavier and filled with sadness, but still. His smile was just as beautiful as ever. Bucky didn't laugh with him as he usually did, instead preferring to just watch him.

God, how Steve had never realised was beyond Bucky. How he'd never said anything to his best friend that had made him question their relationship ...

"You did not just compare the Lord to genital herpes."

"It worked, didn't it? I got my message across."

"Yeah," Steve said, a light chuckle in his tone. "It worked. Fuck. I-"

He cut himself off. Bucky wanted to kiss the words right off his lips.

"Hey," Bucky said. "Why do you do that? What'd you want to say?"

Steve pulled a bit of skin off his lip. Blood bloomed to the surface. Bucky lifted his hand up to wipe it away, but decided last minute to scratch at his own upper lip instead.

"Nothing important," Steve said. "Just - I can't believe she's gone."

"Yeah," Bucky said. "Fuck, yeah. I know. I can't believe it either."

"Nick Fury cried."

"You cried."

"She was my Ma."

"I know. I just - don't really see you cry much, is all."

"I cry all the time."

"Really?"

"Well, not really. You do, though."

"Oh, I totally admit to that."

"You didn't today."

"Yeah." Bucky shrugged his shoulders, a difficult thing to do in a single bed occupied by two fully grown teenage boys. "Guess I didn't really need to cry."

"All cried out on Christmas adverts and ex-girlfriends?"

Bucky looked at Steve in the darkness of his room. "Yeah," he said. "Something like that."

There was that heaviness over them, that feeling that they could go anywhere and do anything, but they were just too tired to do a single thing. It was the same feeling they got at midnight on the hill as they stared up at the stars, and everything that seemed to go unspoken between them still lay there in the meagre space between their bodies that Bucky so desperately, achingly wanted to close.

"Go to sleep," Bucky whispered. He touched his hand to the side of Steve's head, pushing some blond hair behind his ear. He needed to get it cut; Bucky would make the appointment for him tomorrow. "Sleeping will make it better."

Steve closed his eyes, still pulling at that wound on his lip.

"Nothing will make it better, Buck."

Bucky would've chastised him for being pessimistic, but before he had the chance, he heard soft snores coming from Steve's mouth.

He wasn't sure when he fell asleep. When he looked back on that night, he wished he'd spent the eight hours before morning simply staring at his best friend's face, memorising every stretch of it as if he hadn't before. Maybe then he wouldn't have woken up in a fusty room wearing a crumpled suit, with nothing beside him but a note on the pillow.

_Buck,_

_Didn't tell you last night because you'd just worry. Guess you'll worry now too, but you always worry anyway._

_Don't worry though. I applied to join the army a couple months ago, and now I'm eighteen and Ma is gone, I've decided to take their offer. I'm headed to New York today to begin health assessments and training._

_I'll keep in touch,_

_Steve._

Steve had left his phone on the dressing table in his Ma's room. Bucky picked it up and called the first number on the list.

"Steve?"

"Ma?"

"James? What's the matter? Are you okay? Is Steve-"

"Steve's gone. He's gone, he's-"

"James, I'll be there in five minutes. Hold on, darling."

When his mother arrived, Bucky was sitting on his best friend's bed, his head in his hands and tears dripping down his chin.

Winnie ran to him and cupped his head in her hands, pressing his face into her chest in a hug.

"Oh my darling," she said. "What's wrong?"

"I loved him, Ma," he told her, grasping onto her shirt like he used to when he was ten years old, never after. The white linen of her bed shirt became soaked within seconds.

"I know you did, my darling," she said. "I know you loved him."

"No," Bucky said, pushing her away. Perhaps he was stronger when he was upset, because she broke apart from him like he was a hot poker. Her eyes were wide and hurt. "Please don't look at me like that."

"James..."

"I loved him, Ma," he repeated. "I loved him." 

"I ... I know?"

"No, Ma. I loved him like you love Da."

Winnie pretended she hadn't known all along as she held her sobbing son in her arms, reading the letter that had more tears on it than ink, lying to herself that more than anything, she didn't really hate Steve Rogers that day.


	2. Chapter 2

“Well, whose is it?”

Bucky sat in what was described on the real estate website as a cosy apartment in a reconstructed pre-revolutionary house. Cosy was enough of a term, as it was only one room, and the radiator that was expected to keep them heated through the winter was not enough to warm even Natalia’s pinkie toe, never mind her feet, scarred from dancing. He was wearing a pair of leather gloves with the fingers cut out so that he could type, because even his professors back in America hated him at that moment.

Outside, snow did not flutter down neatly to the ground as it had back home in Leavenworth, as it would have been as he spoke. Instead it cascaded down in torrents, as thick as a rainstorm and as white as the ashes of hell, and Bucky found it very hard to keep his mind off his sisters, and how they would be out constructing snowmen back home, their eyelashes sprinkled with snowflakes, their lips as red as the poinsettias his ma put in the wreath on the front door.

Natalia loved the snow, but only when it was already on the ground. On days like this, where it still poured from the heavens and coated the slippery streets, she said it reminded her too much of fire, the sparks that flickered off and burnt her childhood home to the ground, her parents still inside. Bucky wasn’t aware of what loss felt like – at least, he hadn’t been – but he could see the hardness in Natalia’s eyes, could feel the weight on her shoulders transferring to his own.

On days like these, they both stayed indoors, in their shitty little apartment, Natalia’s feet like two blocks of ice pressing against his thigh.

Her feet were not anywhere near him after his question. She was only on the other side of their two-seater sofa, but she felt as far from him as Steve did, wherever the other man was. It felt so strange to him to not know where he was, when they had been attached at the hip for so many years.

Natalia’s green eyes narrowed. She could always tell when Bucky was thinking about him. Her red hair was poker straight, a new look she had been experimenting with. She said it was easier to maintain, but it didn’t suit her as much as the curls. That was how Bucky knew he didn’t love her, not the way he was supposed to; men didn’t usually look at Natalia and think she was unsuitable for anything. Men usually looked at Natalia and wanted everything Bucky already had, everything he should’ve felt lucky for.

He didn’t love her. He didn’t feel lucky. At times he felt sick. Others, he felt used. Sometimes he wondered what they could’ve been if he hadn’t kissed her that day in the playground, when she spoke Russian to him and he could feel it shoot right down to the bottom of his stomach.

“Hey,” Bucky said. He reached out a gloved hand to touch her, but his cold fingers came up short. She moved her bare legs towards her chest and clutched them like she had held him just last night. He wondered if she had known then what she had only told him five minutes before. “Natalia, please.”

She sighed. She was thinner in Moscow than she was in Leavenworth. It suited her, but also made her more pointed, more like a crow than a robin, all sharp edges so her skin matched her eyes. Nonetheless, she hadn’t had any problem picking up suitors. (When he saw men looking at her, he placed a protective hand on her hip, not caring that she wasn’t his, that he didn’t want her to be his, that he wanted someone else.) Perhaps it was because she didn’t eat as much, or at all, when he thought about it, or maybe it was because she tasted the cigarettes off his tongue and got addicted herself. It would explain the empty packets he found in the trash and never said a word about.

Bucky didn’t say a word about a lot of things. It was one of his issues.

The silence hung thickly in the air, and the lump in his throat had quickly lodged itself in his stomach. Natalia liked playing games; she liked to pretend she didn’t, but it was something left over from her time in the orphanage, some psychological trick she liked to pull with the younger girls or the older boys to get some extra food. It was a survival tactic, mind games. Bucky knew more about it than he cared to let on.

“Natalia,” he said. There was a hint of begging in his voice, though he wasn’t the type to plead. He had been raised with more strength than that. “Natalia, cut it out. I need to know.”

Natalia spat out some tobacco she had been chewing. It landed on the floor. Bucky knew he would be the one to clean it up. He didn’t care. His mind was racing a mile a minute.

“Just a name, Nat. Come on. Is it me or Alexei?”

She did not reply. She did not know. Though of course she knew, otherwise she wouldn’t have brought it up to him. It was his.

He ran his hands through his hair and swallowed a few times fast. “Fuck,” he said. Natalia spat a little more onto the grotty floorboards. “Fuck, fuck fuck.”

She said nothing. Bucky gave a loud groan and pushed himself up from the sofa in one quick movement.

That spooked her. Years of experience had taught her not to show fear, but Bucky could see the tension in her shoulders. She did not like men when they got irritated, so he tried his best to remain calm. Since becoming friends with her, it had became part of his personality, an attribute that many had complimented him on.

He didn’t feel right playing games with Natalia. He loved her more than the stars and moon (perhaps not the sun). But he needed answers out of her. He needed to know the details so he could start to fix whatever mess they had made together. He needed to know so he could fix it, like he was expected to fix everything.

“Fuck’s sake,” he said, his back to her.

He slammed a glass from the table into the sink, and watched as it smashed under his hands. The leather stopped it from cutting his palm, but his fingers got the brunt. He swore under his breath.

“It’s not my fucking fault you’re cheating on your fiancé, Romanoff,” Bucky snapped, turning around to face her. She had crumpled in on herself. He reminded her of her father; not Fury, who was scary to everyone but her, but the other father, her biological father, who she barely spoke about. Bucky didn’t need to hear the words come out of her mouth to know what he’d done to her.

Blood spurted from the corner of her mouth, spreading over her lip as she chewed at it. Eye contact was never a problem for her, and even as she was hurting she maintained it. It was intense, but Bucky did not back down from a fight. He never backed down from a fight; that’s why he thought … that’s why he was sure that eventually, sometime, maybe Steve would …

It didn’t matter. Steve didn’t love him, he’d made that clear. Natalia’s words still rung loud and clear in his ear every time he thought of him: “He fucking left you! He fucking left all of us, and you’re spending your time screwing half the city trying to forget that you were in love with your best friend! Pathetic.”

It was both rich and ironic that Natalia had done much the same thing in her attempts to forget Clint Barton’s existence. Bucky had not been witness to whatever went down between them at the airport directly before the two left for Russia, but he had noticed the distinct lack of text messages and video chats from Barton, when he and Romanoff had been inseparable for years.

Relationships changed, though. He needed to accept that. He needed to-

He had other things to focus on.

“Does Alexei know?” he asked, his voice back to calm and controlled. Even though she was still being interrogated, Natalia relaxed, at least minutely. Bucky was pleased. He didn’t like frightening her. It made him remember she was a human too.

“Know what?” she said, the first thing she had deemed important enough to utter. “That I’m fucking my roommate? Is that what you’re referring to?”

Keeping his voice low had the unfortunate side effect of allowing Natalia to wipe the floor with him.

“Shut the fuck up,” Bucky muttered, turning back to the dishes. “Shut the fuck up, Natalia. You know why we’re…”

“I know why you’re doing it. I don’t know why the fuck I’ve messed up a good thing doing it.”

“That’s kind of your thing, though,” Bucky said, shrugging his shoulders. “You fuck people, and you fuck things up.”

Thank God for his youth spent on the sports field. It allowed him to dodge the glass that Natalia threw directly at his head. It wasn’t the first time; she liked grabbing whatever she could and throwing it at people. For the first few years, Bucky had given her the benefit of the doubt, but there was only so much you could blame on trauma.

Natalia’s eyes were bloodshot. There were red spots high on her cheeks, and her chest was heaving like she’d ran a marathon.

“Don’t – you – fucking – dare,” she said. “If you’re calling me a slut Barnes, I swear to God…”

“How the fuck can I call you a slut? I’m the one who slept with you in the fucking Love Barn, even if I didn’t know you were a virgin at the time…”

“You slept with Jane in the Love Barn,” she snapped. “You slept with me at my house-party, right before Dad came home. Do you seriously not give a shit about anyone unless they’re called James or Steve?”

A muscle twitched in Bucky’s jaw. “Don’t talk about Steve,” he said.

Natalia put a hand to her head. “You’re right,” she said. She paused. “Sorry. I promised I wouldn’t…”

“Yeah.” Bucky grabbed a beer from the fridge. At the same time, he and Natalia flopped back onto the sofa. “So,” he said. “You might be pregnant.”

“Yeah. Might be.”

“It might be mine.”

“Would probably be yours. I haven’t slept with Alexei in weeks.”

Bucky took his mouth away from the rim of the beer bottle to look at her. It was like the first time; a small, ginger kid with red eyes and redder lips. It was always her lips, chapped and red, that reminded him of…

He leaned over, very carefully so as not to make her bolt again, and pressed his lips softly against her mouth. She tensed up underneath him, but within seconds relaxed, and he felt her breath against his upper lip.

“We’ll figure this out,” he said, eyes still closed, bringing her hand up to his mouth. Her fingers, if he kid himself enough, were thin, bonier at the knuckles than anywhere else, paler than the rising sun. Artist’s hands. He put her fingers in his mouth and listened to the sweet intake of breath.

Finally, he opened his eyes, just so he could touch her cheek, so he could press another kiss to her mouth. Another tender kiss followed, and because it was such an anomaly, Natalia buried her face in his chest to avoid him witnessing such a moment of weakness.

“You must’ve really loved him,” she said.

Bucky pressed a kiss to her head. “You promised.”

A soft sigh. “I know,” Natalia replied. “Sometimes I just wish I hadn’t.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to warn everyone, there is a new trigger warning added to the tags for this chapter. If you are sensitive to issues surrounding pregnancy, I would definitely check it out. I won't put specifics here in case of spoilers, but it's in the tags, and it is not described in detail. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

It wasn't his. It wasn't anybody's.

Natalia lost the baby four months in. They hadn't had time to get a test, to try and work out who the father was.

It didn't matter. Bucky mourned nonetheless. Natalia retreated into herself. She did nothing but sit in the apartment sipping cold tea.

She had been told years ago that she would never have a child. She hadn't believed it until she lost her.

"Rose," she said to Bucky. "Rose Barnes."

Natalia liked pretending it was Bucky's. It made her happier to act as if their little tryst had an innocent ending, that it had produced something good rather than ruining whatever respect and dignity each of them had left for themselves.

Bucky bought her flowers on a Sunday. The girl in the shop always smiled at him, bright and white. She was blonde, and utterly beautiful, and when she asked chirpily, "For your special someone?" Bucky could only answer with a grimace that she took for humility.

Most people in Moscow had seen him with Natalia at one stage or another. They took their assertions that they were just friends as teasing, or else outright rudeness, that they wouldn't admit what was clear to see. Of course, it wasn't as easy as saying they were together, or that they were apart. There were so many layers to him and Natalia's relationship that he couldn't even begin to explain.

Mostly, they fucked each other because they had no one else. But yet, even when Natalia had Alexei, she had still came home from dates and collapsed into Bucky's arms, took his dick into her hands or her mouth, made him see stars.

She wanted to give him peace, even if it was for a couple minutes. Moving to Russia had been all Bucky and Natalia had wanted for years; now that they were there, there was nothing they wanted to do more than go home again. But going home wasn't an option; neither of them were talking to their true home.

Bucky missed his mother, though. His sisters too, and his father. Winnie never believed him when he said him and Natalia weren't a thing.

"I hope you aren't leading her on, James," his mother said, as if the reverse couldn't possibly be true.

Bucky clutched to whatever Natalia Romanova would give him. He touched her with the care and delicacy he had imagined touching Steve with. If he closed his eyes and pressed a kiss to her waist, he could pretend he had done the same to Steve when the younger boy was smaller, when Bucky could still have lifted him with one arm, when things could've been innocent, just two little boys in love ...

Steve hadn't been innocent for him for a long time. Bucky had always wanted to be touched, had always wanted someone to hurt him while making him feel good. It was why he had slept with Jane, with Susan, with Natasha, with Tony ...

Tony had been a mistake. They didn't talk about it. They had both been very, very drunk; it was Bucky's first time with a man, it was Tony's first time with a man he actually gave a shit about.

It was a pretty fucked up night, by all accounts. Tony’s lips were on his neck when he admitted to Bucky what he had always known.

"God," he had breathed. "I wish I coulda done this with Steve."

"Same here, buddy," Bucky had said.

They both laughed. They didn't come, not for a while. The laughter had made their chests ache.

"Reed, too," Tony had said, as they lay in bed beside each other, very purposefully not looking at each other. He was slurring so much it was difficult to pick up on his meaning, but Bucky got it. Reed had been it for Tony in middle school, in high school, probably long after the other man left for New York in the same way as it turned out Steve had.

Bucky had always had an unnatural ability to remember anything that happened to him, no matter how drunk. Tony did not share that ability. Bucky felt bad that he remembered everything whilst Tony did not, but Tony never asked him what had happened, so he never mentioned it again. In fact, Tony kept up a good show of continuing to flirt with Bucky at inopportune moments so no one picked up on the change.

Bucky's love for Steve had never been innocent.

He had always wanted more than his best friend wanted to give, always wanted to link his fingers with his when they were walking down the corridor, constantly needed to be bumping their shoulders together. There was a part of him that would always remember lying up on the hill, pointing out Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, and how Steve had turned to him that night, how his eyes had somehow seemed even brighter in the darkness, the moon reflecting the bright blue of his irises.

Steve had turned to him, had looked at him for a long moment, and Bucky kidded himself that his gaze dropped to his lips. Then, Steve opened his mouth instead, and Bucky pictured how it would feel to lift his fingers to his lips, to trace out the pink of his cheeks, to taste their tongues together. “You’re so lucky, Buck,” Steve had said. “Your parents love each other so much. You all love each other so much.”

Bucky had smiled then. That expression in particular was one that he prided himself on being convincing with. He had gathered fistfuls of grass, pressed them into his palms to stop him from touching Steve’s face (why would he, if there was dirt in his skin, if he would make something so perfect, so beautiful, a mess just by brushing against him?). “Yeah,” Bucky had said, back then when things were simple. “Yeah, I’m really lucky.”

He still remembered how, in 2005 perhaps, he had walked into his house the day before school started. He had been out with Nat – he had kissed her so hard that she let out a little moan in the back of her throat, and it went down right to his ankle, let him forget that he was picturing someone else. His schoolbag was dropped by the door, and Bucky made his way to the living room. He had called out for his sisters, for his mother, and found that there was a post it note on the wall just before the door informing him that they were out at the movies, and that she loved him. Bucky had plucked the note off the wall, had turned it over in his hand and folded it into his palm.

There had been a smile on his face when he walked into the living room. That was what he remembered the most – not the random woman that was pressed into the couch, how her clothes were strewn over the rug, how all she was wearing was a pair of heels or how his father was kneeled in front of her, frozen in place. The post it note dropped to the ground, and Bucky felt like screaming. He felt like punching something, but he didn’t do anything. He just turned around, tried to will himself not to throw up right then and there, and went up to his bedroom.

The door was locked behind him. There was a part of him, he guessed, that had expected his father to immediately run after him, but that wasn’t the case. Instead, George took his time redressing the woman that he had picked up at the gambler’s table, saying goodbye to her at the door, kissing her before he opened it. They were in the middle of the New England countryside – it was a small town, everybody talked, but there were no neighbours nearby to see how he looked at her, how he watched her hips shifting as she walked. Then, and only then, did Bucky hear the footsteps against the stairs.

His father only had to wait a moment before Bucky relented and allowed him into the room. After all, it was far from the first time, and Bucky had heard the rumours – it was just the first time that it had been that obvious, that Bucky had known exactly what was going on. George had patted Bucky’s shoulder, had moved to sit beside him on the crumpled bedsheets.

“Sometimes,” he had said, voice heavy, a smoker’s voice, “sometimes as men, we make mistakes, son. Sometimes, we do things that we shouldn’t. Sometimes we feel like we have to, that we have no choice. Do you understand?”

Bucky had nodded. He was only fourteen, he told himself in years that went on, he couldn’t have done anything else. He had no choice. George had smiled at him then, but it wasn’t his father’s smile, it was someone else’s, someone twisted.

“Here, son,” George said. He reached down to his wrist, pulled off the watch around it. He pressed it into Bucky’s hand, nodding once when he did so. “In houses like this one, we can get lost. Too many voices, you know? This’ll remind you we have to stick together.”

Bucky had never told his mother about George. He knew now, as an adult, that there was probably no need to, that she had to have known he smelled of someone else, but there was still a guilt there. Bucky had a lot of regrets. He had been born with regrets, it felt like, and now there was no coming back from them.

The only choice he had, after all, was to keep making more – or at least that was what his actions would insinuate.

Tonight, they had decided to do something different. They had both been trying to distract themselves with studying. Natalia was working two waitressing jobs. Bucky had taken up bartending. They were testing each other using flashcards. They read through textbooks, pretending that they weren’t almost falling asleep during them. They sat on the opposite side of the couch, and Natalia didn’t wear dresses anymore. She hid herself away behind large sweaters, the grand majority of them from Bucky’s side of the closet.

Tonight, they had a few vodkas as they studied. That was probably how Natalia ended up throwing the textbook away, advancing forward with a purpose that Bucky had always admired about her, and settling onto his lap. She touched the side of his lips, looked down at him for a long moment, and he had kissed her so hard that their mouths felt bruised.

“One night,” she had whispered as Bucky pulled his pants off, wriggling underneath her because he was damned if he was trying to breathe without her above him anymore. “One night, just give me one night.”

Bucky nodded, his forehead against hers, and caught her lips again before working down her neck. “Oh,” Nat breathed, her voice husky as ever, her body reacting to his hands pressed against her hips. “Clint, please.”

He knew his role. He knew what he had to do, knew that there was enough alcohol in his system for Natalia’s words to go right over his head, for him to focus instead of the curves of her body and pretend that they were harder. Her muscles were less defined now – she hadn’t gone to the gym in several weeks, maybe even six months, since the doctors told her to take things easy.

His mouth moved from gasping against the curve of her neck up to just below her ear. He pushed back her hair, and she moved to take it from him, holding it back so that her neck was bare. “Steve,” he whispered. It seemed sacred, the name that escaped his lips, and he hoped to God that Natalia wouldn’t hear it, even if he knew the drink would’ve made him louder, that the neighbours would hear, that they had done this before. He knew his role, after all, they both did. “Steve, Iloveyou, please, feel so good…”

They woke up the next morning tangled in the sheets rather than each other. Nat sat up first. She pushed her hair off her face – it had been sticking to the sweat on her cheeks. “We can’t keep doing this,” she said, voice even lower than normal. The back of her throat was sore, Bucky knew, just like his back was scratched to all hell. “We need to go home.”

Bucky swallowed thickly, looking up at the swirls on the ceiling. “I can’t,” he said. “I can’t face them, Nat, I can’t do it.”

Natalia paused then. She shuffled until she was lying down in bed again, and her green eyes looked at him for a long, searching moment. “Your mom doesn’t care, you know.”

“Dad does.”

“You don’t need your dad’s approval, James. You never have.”

He always had. He knew it, Natalia knew it. Still, she was one hell of a liar. He almost believed her, or would have, if he wasn’t one himself.

“The year’s almost up, anyway,” Bucky muttered.

“Doesn’t mean we need to stay for the extra three months,” Nat said. “We already have the credits. I wouldn’t mind being seen by Dad’s doctor, either.”

Bucky reached out, took her hand in his. It was small, but there were scars over the skin there, remnants of the burns that she had carried from the orphanage. The one thing about herself that she couldn’t change, the one thing that she had never attempted to. “I know,” he said. “It’s hard, Talia.”

There were people in this world that were soulmates. Winnie Barnes had always believed that, and so had Sarah. Bucky told himself he didn’t, but there were times with Steve when he had wondered. There was a year when they had barely spoken, a year when nothing other than a stupid disagreement had kept them apart, but they had found their way back together. He had kept hoping that would happen this time, that Steve would get bored of New York, or at the very least that it wouldn’t be the note of finality that they had alluded to in that coffee shop just after graduation, that one day Bucky would get a letter in the mail and it would have a picture of Steve in military garb and he would feel his heart bursting out of his chest all over again.

He used to think that was the worst feeling, what he had around Steve. The feeling of being so close, but far from close enough. The feeling of having it all and still wanting more, the feeling of being so selfishly desperate, of always wanting to have Steve by his body, in his heart, in his hand. Now, though, he would’ve died to have that feeling one more time. He had tried, with Natalia. He had tried with so many other women and men in Leavenworth and Moscow alike, and he had found nothing. He had found nothing.

Even with Natalia, the one person that had always brought a wildfire into his chest, he couldn’t find what he had with Steve. There was something that bonded them together, something that brought them back to this place again and again, and Bucky couldn’t, wouldn’t, pretend that it was anything other than soulmates. Now, though, it was over. He had to focus on those he did have.

Maybe Natalia wasn’t his romantic soulmate, but she was definitely something. She was proving that now, had proven it when after the initial shock had worn off and the anger at what they had done together had dissipated, Bucky had actually been excited to have a kid with her. He had been looking forward to it, had touched against her stomach, had loved the idea of it in a way he hadn’t envisioned. Like so many other things, that had fallen apart. He needed to accept that. He needed to move on.

“Fine,” he said, hours later when they were on opposite sides of the couch again and Natalia was wearing a dress. There were bruises on her upper arms, the shape of Bucky’s hands, and he had bite marks on his neck, red and vicious. “We’ll go back.”

“And we’ll never do this again,” Natalia said. The fact that she said ‘this’ was something that caused him pause – surely it should’ve been ‘that’ – but then she was reaching forward, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and pulling him down to meet her lips. This time, she didn’t say Clint, and he didn’t say Steve. He wasn’t sure whether it felt better, or worse.


End file.
